It’s a long post, I am sorry.
Im Amy (now 30) and my partner is Adrian (now 26)
We met on Tinder June 2016.
We are very compatible with our interests and our personalities mirrored each other well. I should note he is Polish but has excellent English.
I won’t go into minute detail of our relationship but other than to say we love each other deeply, always show a great deal of affection, make each other laugh and smile all the time and we are incredibly compatible in every way. We have lots of funny things we do with each other, we think the same – I will often say things and he will have been thinking exactly the same. Or he will finish my sentences. I love to cook for him, I look after him as much as I can and I just want to make him happy.
My health has never been brilliant since I was a teenager – I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis
Jan 2017 I discovered he had signed up to a swingers site – I confronted him about this and he assured me he didn’t do anything and I agreed to give him a second chance. When I saw his profile on this site it did turn out he hadn’t messaged anyone so I was willing to try and forget it.
That was hard and my trust was damaged, for awhile I was anxious and paranoid and often had to talk to him about it to gain reassurance.
That feeling has long dwindled and doesn’t affect us anymore but I needed to bring this up for my main point of this post.
I want to note now that I came to him with debt from previous years which I did make him aware of at the beginning. I felt great shame because of this debt and I was struggling to confront it or deal with it but he accepted it and we didn’t talk much more about it.
By April 2017 his parents had helped him purchase a house with the intention of me living with him which was what we both wanted as we hated to be separated.
This meant I had to try and sort out my debts but for reasons I cannot explain because there is no excuse I didn’t – I buried my head in the sand. Every time I thought of them I would get panic attacks and shut down – the shameful feeling, feelings of being worthless were overwhelming.
I tried to do it but once again I avoided them.
We get to 2018 and I got very very ill, to the point I was let go from my job and to this day I am on benefits and cannot work though I am improving slowly. He has supported me through all my illness and has been wonderful and because he loves me this is not what our problem is.
Once I went on benefits and stayed home things got a little better with medication at first however I got some nasty side effects that made me worse in many ways very quickly so I had to change meds and basically keep trial and erroring stuff. I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia – a crazy mix of problems.
My mental health during the first half of 2018 was bad, I was depressed and anxious all the time and I hated being out of work but I couldn’t push myself. I had to focus on my health for a change.
There came a time around May 2018 I think, Adrian asked me about my debts and I had a bit of a breakdown and admitted they were not sorted and now being on benefits I didn’t know what to do. It did lead to an argument understandably – please don’t think I don’t know I did wrong because I know that well.
We looked into what I could do and I could set up a debt relief order. But first I needed to wait for full approval of my benefits as I was still during the assessment stage.
Once I had that sorted I applied for the debt relief order and waited for the paperwork. It came and I found I had to pay a £90 fee for it – I didn’t have the money at the time and I don’t know why I didn’t say anything to Adrian I just thought I could save for it.
I do want you to bear in mind that I had a memory problem this past year due to my condition too, I would forget things easily and be quite foggy headed. I stopped taking medications partly because they were not helping and making me worse but also because I was getting charges off the NHS for not paying for my meds. I was told with my benefits I was entitled to them free but this turned out not to be the case and when I was being prescribed 4 medications a week that is very costly. The NHS charges have now been included in my DRO.
So I genuinely did forget about it for awhile, we were always so happy that I focused more on him and trying to get better than my debts which was a huge mistake.
Now we come to the later part of 2018, a few months ago it got brought up again as I had actually started setting it up – I had everything in place I was just waiting for the company to send me to form and ID number so I could pay the fee and have the debt relief order in place finally.
However this took a long time to come, the longer it took the longer the whole process was drawn out – a debt relief order means that if my situation doesn’t improve within 12 months my debts would be written off but only once the fee is paid.
I finally got the fee paid and on 12th December 2018 I had my DRO approved.
Just before it was approved and all we did have a conversation, not an argument but he voiced his concerns about how I have gone about this and had I acted on the dro in May then we would be close to having rid of my debts. I knew this but I could see how it was affecting him.
It wasn’t also just the debts, he mentioned how he had given up asking me to go to doctors and sorting medication out because I just didn’t do it – again I have no excuse for this either.
My benefit money would contribute towards our food bill since he took care of everything else but I would have nothing left over, nothing I could save. Looking back I realise now I could have brought the food bill down and save money for us both however I can only change going forward.
Now my current situation is this, we had a lovely Christmas but on 29th Dec he said we needed to talk and bingo – he wanted to break up.
This was a huge shock, in every conversation we have had I have asked if he resented me because of this and he has always assured me that he didn’t. He has no problem me being home unable to work, I know this and he has more than explained this is not the reason.
His reason is he just doesn’t think he can cope anymore with how I have gone about things and I totally understand that. I have ran from my problems and avoided them completely while promising I would deal with them.
He still loves me very much, that hasn’t changed and he feels no hate towards me. He admitted the last couple of months he has begun to resent me for this and doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t believe I can change this and thinks it will happen again.
I did break down as you can imagine, I have had a few serious long term relationships before him and he is the first person I could be myself with and envision a future with – we were planning a baby for 2019 and wanted to get married one day. That was my dream.
I pleaded for a second chance or to maybe take some time apart, he was torn and agreed to let me know in the morning what he decided. He did let me stay that day, and also the night we spent together which in my head I knew in a way could have potentially been a goodbye for us both. It was wonderful in some ways, we were close and both hurting so were there to comfort each other.
The next morning he still wasn’t sure so I suggested we could take it one day at a time which he agreed to do.
We went about trying to make the morning normal though I knew we were both going to need time to get over the experience of this.
Note here that before he told me he wanted to break up, after our last big talk about debts and doctors and the like, I had a lot of things I planned to change but I wasn’t able to do much until Christmas was out of the way due to time and money. I had only told him briefly I wanted to do a lot in the new year but I never laid out my plan and maybe I should have looking back.
After that night together I explained all of the things I wanted to do and how hard I was willing to fight for us, I wanted to change and make sure I didn’t repeat this mistake and learn from it. I explained that I didn’t expect him to believe me and the only way for him to regain that trust in me was for me to prove it with actions. He was still not sure.
I advised him to speak to his mum, my family knew of the breakup conversation the day earlier after it happened and I thought he might feel better if he spoke to his mum too.
So he went over, was there for 3 hours and came back and told me no he couldn’t do it or atleast not right now. I accepted that although I cannot describe the pain through all of this (even now this is almost impossible to type as I feel like I can’t breathe thinking of it but I really need help) so I suggested maybe we take a break – not breakup, not throw it away just yet but take some time apart and he thought this was best.
He said how a massive part of him didn’t want me to go, didn’t want to leave me but at the same time he couldn’t cope with this anymore and I understood that. He said how there was no way he could cut me out of his life and wouldn’t want to. He also said how couples break up and get back together all of the time which I knew but it doesn’t make this any easier.
So we sat and talked about how we would go about this, I said I wouldn’t change my addresses until we met up again in a month and see where we stand, I would leave the majority of my things in the house and move back with my mum so I packed the basics for a few weeks and set them aside.
We also have two cats together which ofcourse have to stay with him, my mum couldn’t pick me up for another 3 hours so I had plenty of time with him and the cats who I loved dearly. Because of my benefits our cats went to PDSA vets – meaning he wouldn’t be able to use them if I wasn’t with him and if anything happens he would need to go to another vet and probably spend a fortune but there was no alternative right now.
I originally said I would give him updates on the things I am doing as while we were apart he had no way of knowing if I would follow through with all I said I would do which he was happy with.